SATA 2 vs 3 with SSD

SimonTW

SimonTW

SimonTW

Associate
Joined
23 May 2006
Posts
720
Hello,

I am going to be buying a PCI-E SATA controller card (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CC-004-SR&groupid=701&catid=49&subcat=424) to run my two mechanical HDDs in RAID 1, and I am considering buying a second to use with my SSD to get the benefits of SATA 3.

As my motherboard is quite a few years old now it only has SATA 2 ports, so I assume that my SSD, a 128GB Crucial M4, is not being used to its full potential. Therefore if I were to connect my SSD via this controller card, would I see much of a performance boost?

Also, this may sound like a stupid question but if I were to connect my SSD via one of these cards, would I have to reinstall Windows?

Thanks,

Simon
 
If your motherboard doesn't support RAID 1 then I suppose the card is OK for that purpose.

If your motherboard SATA controller does support RAID 1 I'd just use that.

As far as an SSD goes then you do get better performance from a good SATA 3 controller when compared to SATA 2. How much of that extra performance you'd notice in day to day usage rather than benchmarks I couldn't say.

I did say a good SATA 3 controller. The card uses a Marvell 88SE9128 chipset which is a very early SATA 3 controller (circa 2009). It's not very good and you might as well just stick to the SATA 2 on your motherboard.

Here the Marvell SATA 3 controller struggles against Intel's SATA 2: Marvell SATA-6G SSD Performance vs Intel ICH10
 
Surveyor said:
If your motherboard doesn't support RAID 1 then I suppose the card is OK for that purpose.

If your motherboard SATA controller does support RAID 1 I'd just use that.

As far as an SSD goes then you do get better performance from a good SATA 3 controller when compared to SATA 2. How much of that extra performance you'd notice in day to day usage rather than benchmarks I couldn't say.

I did say a good SATA 3 controller. The card uses a Marvell 88SE9128 chipset which is a very early SATA 3 controller (circa 2009). It's not very good and you might as well just stick to the SATA 2 on your motherboard.

Here the Marvell SATA 3 controller struggles against Intel's SATA 2: Marvell SATA-6G SSD Performance vs Intel ICH10
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply, some very useful info there.

Firstly, regarding using my motherboard for RAID, it does have the capability, but it's a little complicated. My mobo is a Gigabyte EX58-UD5, with 6 SATA ports that use an Intel controller, and the other 4 using a JMicron controller. I did some research when I first got my SSD and found out that the JMicron controller is pretty useless, so I have my SSD and two HDDs plugged in to 3 of the 6 SATA ports relating to the Intel controller. Now it is possible to set up a RAID configuration with HDDs connected to these ports, but I'm not sure if I could continue to have my non-RAID SSD connected as well.

Moving on to the SATA controller I linked, thanks for pointing out that the chipset isn't particularly good. I have looked around at other alternatives and have found a card which actually costs less and uses the ASMedia ASM1061 chipset, which is supposedly better than the Marvell chipset (I don't think I can link to it for competitor reasons).

Therefore what I could do is purchase one of the SATA 3 controller cards and connect my SSD to that, and then use the RAID capabilities of my motherboard to create a RAID 1 configuration with my HDDs. However I was also planning to buy a WD 4TB Red HDD to add some extra storage, which takes me back to my earlier question regarding having both non-RAID and RAID storage drives connected to the Intel controlled SATA ports (once they have been set to RAID mode). Is this possible?
 
You can have non-RAID disks connected to the same controller as those in a RAID array.

You choose which disks form part of the array and any others remain accessible individually.
 
To be quite honest, you're in the same position as me. I have an oldish motherbaord with SATA 2 ports and I too was wondering about buying a SATA controller card. But after some research, I decided that my money was best invested in a new motherboard.

So that's what I plan to do shortly, rather than pour good money into bad.
 
darael said:
To be quite honest, you're in the same position as me. I have an oldish motherbaord with SATA 2 ports and I too was wondering about buying a SATA controller card. But after some research, I decided that my money was best invested in a new motherboard.

So that's what I plan to do shortly, rather than pour good money into bad.
Click to expand...
This.
 
darael said:
To be quite honest, you're in the same position as me. I have an oldish motherbaord with SATA 2 ports and I too was wondering about buying a SATA controller card. But after some research, I decided that my money was best invested in a new motherboard.

So that's what I plan to do shortly, rather than pour good money into bad.
Click to expand...

That's normally my mentality too, but the controller card I have seen is only ~£20, whereas were I to get a new motherboard, and therefore a new CPU, heatsink and potentially RAM, then I'm looking at hundreds. I don't really play any games anymore so despite being ~5 years old my PC does all I want it too, so I'm not really trying to delay an upgrade as I don't see myself upgrading for a while.
 
digitaldreams said:
On a side note...check this impressive add-on card out. I've had this running for a few months now without any issues whatsoever (compared to a cheaper alternative that wouldn't even work). Gave me USB3 too !.

http://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/U3S6/

Regards
Click to expand...

It wouldn't seem to be a good solution for the OP who has a Gigabyte board.

Asus U3S6 SATA 6 & USB 3.0 Card Review

We really are not going to include anymore numbers then this as the sad fact of the matter is the Asus U3S6 does not like to have any SATA drives attached during POST. I tried the card on a Gigabyte P35 UD4, Gigabyte EP45 Extreme and even a Gigabyte X58 UD3 motherboard; all would fail to POST if a drive was attached to both the card and the motherboards integrated SATA ports (either Intel or integrated JMicron ports). You literally have to either hot plug a drive on to it after the system has booted up, or only have drives attached to the card during POST. No other combination would work. Sacrificing all your motherboard’s SATA 2 ports to gain a mere two SATA 6Gb/s is a less then optimal solution. With that being said, the performance curve of a Seagate XT 2TB drive is basically the same on an Asus P7P55D as it is on the U3S6. If you do have a motherboard on the Asus approved list, the Asus card is a quick easy upgrade path with no down side; for everyone else, I would look elsewhere.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom